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One Onion (Two ounces of Butter) (II)
Two ounces of Butter.
One tablespoonful of Curry Powder.
Half a saltspoonful of Salt.
Two pounds of Fish. The Juice of half a Lemon.
Half a pint of Stock, or half a pint of Almond Milk. (See Chicken Curry.) Melt the butter in a saucepan, put in the onion sliced and fry for a few minutes. Then add the curry powder and fry also. Now pour in the stock or almond milk, add the salt and lemonjuice, and boil all together for five minutes. Then put in the fish, which should be cut up into pieces about one and a half inches square, and allow it to cook in the curry until done, which will be from fifteen to thirty minutes according to the sort of fish.
A plain Anglo-Indian fish curry from the late Victorian repertoire: onion softened in butter, curry powder bloomed in the fat, a thin sauce, then the fish poached in it. The only real trap is the cooking time.
- The missing onionThe title carries the first ingredient — one onion — which belongs at the head of the list with the butter. Two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons (55 g).
- Fish quantity and yieldNo weight is given for the fish. Half a pint of sauce this thin will carry about 1 to 1 1/2 lb of firm white fish, serving three or four. Cod, monkfish, halibut or kingfish hold their shape at 1 1/2-inch cubes; sole and plaice will collapse.
- Cut the cooking timeFifteen to thirty minutes will reduce 1 1/2-inch cubes of fish to cotton wool. Slide them into the simmering sauce off the boil and give them 5 to 8 minutes, until the flesh just flakes at the centre. Anything longer than ten minutes is only for very dense fish such as monkfish or shark.
- Half a pintAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, so a scant 1 1/4 US cups. This is a loose, pouring curry rather than a thick one; if you want it to cling, reduce it a little before the fish goes in, not after.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so half of one is about 1/8 teaspoon. That is very little even for half a pint of sauce made with unsalted stock — season at the end instead.
- Almond milkAlmond milk in this period normally means ground blanched almonds steeped in hot water and strained — presumably what the parent Chicken Curry recipe intends — not the carton product, which is far thinner and often sweetened. Blend 3 oz ground almonds with the 10 fl oz of hot water and strain, or use coconut milk, which serves the same purpose in the same style of cookery.
- Frying the powder"Add the curry powder and fry also" is the step that decides whether the dish tastes raw. Give it a full minute or two in the butter over moderate heat until it smells toasted and darkens slightly; commercial curry powder is heavy on turmeric and coriander, both of which are unpleasantly dusty if they only meet liquid.
- Lemon lastThe juice goes in with the sauce here, but acid firms fish protein. If you prefer softer flesh, hold back half the lemon and add it after the fish is cooked.
Curries like this one belong to the Anglo-Indian tradition that came back to Britain with returning colonial officials and their households. The method here is thoroughly anglicised: a single commercial curry powder stands in for the fresh spices ground to order in an Indian kitchen, butter replaces ghee or oil, and the sauce is built on meat stock. The almond milk alternative is the older and more interesting option — a medieval European technique that survived in English cookery, and it happens to shadow the coconut milk of coastal South Indian fish curries closely enough that cooks with no access to fresh coconut could get near the right texture.